Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 29, 1968, the United Nations said “let’s talk” about a Swedish proposal to have a conference.
On 29 May 1968, the Economic and Social Council decided to place the question of convening an international conference on the problems of the human environment on the agenda for its mid-1968 session. It did so on the proposal of Sweden
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325.6ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that in December of 1967 the Swedes had put forward this as an idea.
What I think we can learn from this
The wheels grind slowly. And you need to have some people who really know how to navigate the system, which the Swedes had.
This “matters” because climate change gets on the agenda here. Atmospheric global global atmospheric pollution levels are starting to be talked of as something that is going to require international cooperation. By now. Westphalian state is going to be a West failure. If you’ll pardon my terrible pun.
What happened next
Sure enough, in June of 1972, the Stockholm conference happened. And it was not as much a success as it needed to be. But at least we got the United Nations Environment Programme for what that’s worth.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.